Why is wet bulb temperature important? How does it effect us?

Question

Edit: Thank you all for the detailed answers! You guys are awesome.

In: 2953

Answer 1

Humidity is measured in 2 ways, either a hygrometer or a psychrometer. The wet bulb refers to the psychrometer. A psychrometer has a wet bulb and a dry bulb, the bulbs being thermometers. The dry bulb is just any old thermometer, measuring the air temperature, but the wet bulb is going to have water evaporate away from it, thus cooling the wet bulb. This cooling continues until no more water can carry away heat faster than the environment heats the bulb back up.and you reach equilibrium. The wet bulb then reads the temperature at which the current amount of moisture in the air would be 100% humidity, this temperature is the dew point. The closer the dew point is to the current temperature, the higher the humidity.